The Dead Carcass of the Aaarrggghhh!
a short story by Megan Blaney
I didn’t wake up that Saturday planning to become the first person in Magnolia Parish history to ride a cryptid through the funnel cake line. I’d set my sights lower: print the labels for the donation jars, keep the town council from lighting anything they weren’t prepared to put out, and avoid Aunt Birdie’s “Swamp-Strong Lemonade,” which was mostly grain alcohol and sincerity. But fate, like a raccoon, has a way of flipping the lid you thought you’d secured.
The day began with the unveiling of a mystery: the Dead Carcass of the Aaarrggghhh!, a name chosen by the committee after nine rounds of argument, two pecan pies, and a unanimous agreement that spelling didn’t count if you shouted.
The carcass had been discovered by our mayor, Tandy “Don’t Ask” McGraw, during what he called a “routine jog” and what everyone else called “falling out of a canoe.”He swore he’d seen it bobbing in the coffee-colored water of Sawgrass Canal: a great, gray, prehistoric something with the mouth of a bass, the spine of a nightmare, and a smell like wet pennies and old grief.
He’d fetched it with a hay hook (he had one, don’t ask), heaved it into the bed of his truck, and announced to the town, “Cryptid secured.”I’m the grant writer for the Magnolia Parish Historical and Unhistorically Interesting Society, which means I write applications for money and create interpretive signs for things like the First Stop Sign On The East Side Of The Street and the infamous 1978 scone that looked like the governor. It’s a living.
I was tasked with making the placard for the Aaarrggghhh!—which is how I found myself on a sunburnt lawn at Swamp Days, standing in front of a decommissioned ice cream truck we’d rebranded as the “Mobile Cryptid Theater.”“Are we sure it’s dead?” I asked, peering through the open doors at the gray, armor-plated curve on the floor.
The carcass—if carcass it was—was on a bed of melting party ice, its thin lips forever parted in a fixed, tragic O. It had whiskers, like a catfish, but more, like it had gone to a Halloween store and bought an extra set for drama. A dorsal fin rose like a displeased eyebrow.Aunt Birdie popped her gum.
“It’s dead enough for government work,” she declared, which, as a retired county clerk, she had the authority to say.
“Besides, it twitches when I poke it with a mop handle.”
“That means it’s not dead.”
“That means it’s uncooperative,” she said. “Same as your Uncle Ray.”
Mayor Tandy appeared in his inaugural sash (he’d made it himself; it said “Mayar”). “Folks!” he shouted, as if addressing gulls. “At two o’clock sharp, we’ll unveil the Dead Carcass of the Aaarrggghhh! This historic creature dates back to—” he squinted at my sign “—the ‘Late-ish Pleistocene or Early-ish Internet.’”
I smiled, because I had written those dates, because I refuse to get sued by paleontologists again.
“Entry fee is three dollars,” he continued. “Includes one view, two facts, and a whiff. Additional whiffs are a dollar.”
We opened the doors. Magnolia Parish came. People love two things here: anything new, and anything old, especially if it’s old and smells like the river.
They filed past, commenting helpfully:“Looks like my ex-husband, if he’d kept more secrets.”
“Those whiskers are church deacon length.”“I seen one o’ them down in the Yazoo once. Tasted like hope.”
Children stared with that heartless wonder kids have, the kind reserved for science experiments and adults who visibly don’t know what they’re doing. I gave facts: “The Aaarrggghhh! is believed to be a member of the entirely unsubstantiated order Persnicketyformes…” I said. “It favored shallow water and inconvenient times.”
A teenager in a straw hat knocked on the ice. The creature’s flank quivered.“Hey,” he said, “it blinked.”“No it didn’t,” I said, and then watched it do exactly that.
The blink was subtle—as if it were checking to see who was around before admitting to oxygen—but once you saw it, you couldn’t unsee it. A slow flex of the lid. A cold stare with the disapproval of a thousand librarians.
“Did y’all see—” began Aunt Birdie, and then the generator cut out.
If you’ve ever been in an ice cream truck with a once-dead, now-maybe-not thing when the air stops humming, you understand how the temperature in your bones can rise and drop at the exact same time.
The silence hit with the force of all forgotten chores. The fans spun down like the last hopes of a sensible outcome.The creature’s mouth opened wider. It made a sound like a skiff brushing a dock. Its sides shivered. Then, with the inevitability of family arriving right as you change into your worst T-shirt, it wiggled.
“Fetch the mop handle,” Aunt Birdie said.
“I don’t think we should poke—”She poked.
The mouth widened into a true, operatic O. The whiskers twitched like radio antennae. Its tail—oh God, it had a tail; we hadn’t seen a tail—flapped. Ice sprayed. Children screamed. Mayor Tandy fell backwards into a donation jar and baptized himself in quarters.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” he bellowed, standing, dripping. “As you can see, the Dead Carcass of the Aaarrggghhh! is, uh, committed to public engagement.”
“Turn the generator back on,” I said.
“It’s out of gas.”
“Then pour in some of Aunt Birdie’s lemonade.”There are moments you hear later quoted back at you like a bad joke you can’t stop telling. Mayor Tandy did indeed pour a quart of Birdie’s Swamp-Strong into the generator. It started. It roared. The fans kicked on.
The creature roared back, a lower, wetter version, and decided, you know what, it had had enough of museums.
It surged forward, a gray torpedo with opinions, and slid down the aluminum ramp through the back doors. Aunt Birdie went after it, because of course she did. I followed, because of course I do.
The world outside was bright and unhelpful. The creature flop-slid across the grass, through the shadow of the crawfish boil, under the canopy where the Methodist women sold tea cakes, past the dunk tank (the high school principal ducked as it passed), leaving a gleaming trail of ice melt and river water like a slug who had discovered performance art.
“Net!” I shouted. “Rope! Something nautical!”
Len from the bait shop showed up with a mesh crab trap, a solution the creature respected so much it jumped directly over it. It barreled under the banner that read WELCOME TO SWAMP DAYS and collected three balloons, which bobbed behind it like a child’s attempt at levity.
The news crews—because of course the Channel Nine van had arrived the moment things smelled like litigation—swung their cameras and began capturing our better angles, by which I mean none.
Pastor Jim sprinted from the church booth with the kind of authority reserved for men who have built a faith around emergency casseroles. He wielded the giant water gun we used for VBS.
“Stand back!” he cried. “I am ordained!”He squirted the creature.
It blinked and turned toward him, politely declining to be converted.
By then, the crowd had divided into three camps: those who chased with the pure joy of not thinking about consequences, those who filmed on their phones, and those who assumed the creature was a sign of something, and debated what. (“It’s a portent.” “It’s just Tuesday.” “It’s the mayor’s fault.” “Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”)
“Genevieve!” Aunt Birdie shouted at me, using my full name like a bat signal for responsibility. “Help me steer it!”
“Steer it where?”
“Back to water! It’s drying out, poor thing.”Poor thing was generous. The Aaarrggghhh! was magnificent and slimy and looking increasingly like an alligator gar, one of those prehistoric fish that make you reconsider evolution and cancel your swimming plans. Gar can live out of water for a while if they have to. I, meanwhile, can barely survive a staff meeting.
We had, coincidentally, set an obstacle course between the creature and Sawgrass Canal: our booths, our tents, our lives. I did the only sensible thing.
I grabbed a bottle of Dawn dish soap from the fried dough stand, shouted “Emergency slip-n-slide!” and began squirting a path on the grass. The teenage volunteers, who had been born for chaos, joined me.
In thirty seconds we’d created a glistening luge worthy of a lawyer’s concern.
“Encourage it,” Aunt Birdie said. “Say something soothing.”
“What do I say to a not-dead cryptid?”
“Same thing you say to your Uncle Ray when he’s in a mood: ‘Hush, sugar. Ain’t no one here gonna fillet you.’”I said it.
The creature blinked, in the international language of “Well, we’ll see.” And then it did the most hopeful thing I’d seen that day. It turned.
I walked backward, leading it like a reluctant dog, slooshing soap, shushing like a Southern librarian, while Pastor Jim waved his Super Soaker and Len kept pace with the net, offering moral support and threats of entanglement.
The creature followed the slick, wriggling, whiskers trembling as if reading a map we’d written in bubbles.
We reached the funnel cake line and, because miracles require a test of faith, it turned left. I followed. It slid beneath the table. Powdered sugar exploded into the air and baptized us all with a fine mist of confectioner’s grace. People shrieked. I kept moving, white as a bakery ghost.
The creature came out from the other end like a pastry that had joined a gym.“Right,” I told it, because that was the direction of water. “Right, friend. You can do it.”It went right.
The soap-luge, by then, was a glimmering river to the real one. We approached the bank. The crowd grew quiet, and in that hush I could hear the tiny, desperate whistle of the thing’s breath, the way anything alive sounds when it wants to keep being alive.
The canal shimmered with the heat and the attention. I stepped aside. The creature paused, blinking at me with lunch-lady judgment. Then it slid into Sawgrass Canal with a sigh that made the trees exhale.
The water closed over its back, and it vanished with one last flip of its tail, taking three balloons and an unreasonable amount of our dignity with it.
Silence. Then, applause.
Magnolia Parish clapped with fundamental relief. A toddler cried, “Do it ‘gain!”
Mayor Tandy put his hands on his knees, panting, and said, “I’ve made so many mistakes.”Pastor Jim, cheeks glowing, laid a hand on his shoulder. “We are all saved by dish soap and second chances,” he said. “Sometimes in that order.”
The news crew trundled over like hyenas with hair gel. A reporter thrust a microphone into my face. “Ma’am,” she said, “what do you call that?”“The Aaarrggghhh!,” I said automatically.
“No, that,” she said, pointing to the sudsy path.
“Oh,” I said. “That’s called an exit.”
They aired the footage that night, after three separate disclaimers and a brief interlude to explain that no animals, humans, or Methodist tea cakes were harmed, although a certain mayor’s credibility suffered abrasions. The clip went regional, then briefly—uncomfortably—national. My dish soap technique acquired names. The Magnolia Luge. The Catfish Canter. The Wet Wisdom of Aunt Birdie. (That last one she put on T-shirts.)
In the days that followed, things did what they always do after a spectacle: settled and continued. There were arguments at the council about whether the creature had been an alligator gar, a sturgeon, or a prehistoric ambassador from a forgotten age with strong opinions about funnel cake. The game warden delivered a pamphlet and a scolding.
We returned the ice cream truck. Attendance at the Historical and Unhistorically Interesting Society tripled for a week and then returned to the baseline of “if there’s cake.”
But quietly, stubbornly, something else happened: our sign changed.I say our, though technically it was mine. I sat in my office (formerly the bridal changing room of what used to be a skating rink) with my laptop and a cup of coffee and re-wrote the placard for the exhibit that was now mostly photographs, a soaked sash, and a heroically dented crab trap.
THE DEAD CARCASS OF THE AAARRGGGHHH!
Beneath it, I typed:On June 11th, during Swamp Days, an unidentified fish-like creature was hauled from Sawgrass Canal. Locals named it the Aaarrggghhh! after the noise Mayor Tandy made. It was exhibited on ice in an ill-advised mobile museum and subsequently revived, escaped, and was guided back to its native waters by a community equipped with dish soap, faith, and a morally ambiguous lemonade. Scholars agree it was either an alligator gar, a sturgeon, or an instructional parable about reading the room.
Then—and this is the part I’m proud of—I added: Please enjoy responsibly. If something in your life resembles a dead carcass, consider whether it might be sleeping, stewing, or waiting for dish soap. Results may vary.
It wasn’t just the fish that had revived, whether you call it gar or miracle. It was my sense that I could do a thing that mattered and not just write about other people doing them. That feeling, too, had been lying there on ice, quietly insisting it was over. It wasn’t. Turns out, it just needed the crowd, a ridiculous banner, and my aunt hollering my full name like grace said backwards.
Two weeks later, the town council voted to start the Aaarrggghhh! Catch-and-Release River Tours. We printed brochures. Len bought life vests, which doubled as fashion statements. Aunt Birdie put “Swamp-Strong Lemonade” in mason jars with warning labels that said “Not For Engines (Anymore).” Pastor Jim blessed the boats. Mayor Tandy, banned from naming things for a probationary period, cut the ribbon with a butter knife because we had misplaced the official scissors.
The tours are honest: we promise you’ll see water, trees, and the place where a legend slid back into its element, a glimmering path to remember that things are rarely as over as they look. Some days you see gar roll, as smooth and sinuous as a thought you tried not to have. Some days you see nothing but turtles judging you from a log.
People come anyway. They take selfies with the sign. They ask me if I really rode a cryptid through the funnel cake line. I say no, because technically I was running beside it. Then I pause. Then I say yes, spiritually.
Yesterday, a little girl in pink rain boots tugged my sleeve after I finished my tour spiel. She had a gap-toothed smile and a seriousness that required a seat. I sat on the edge of the dock with her and our feet swung over the tea-colored water.
“Is it still out there?” she asked.
“The Aaarrggghhh!?”
She nodded.
“Probably,” I said. “Most good things are.”
“What if it dies?”
“Then we’ll let it rest,” I said. “And tell stories about how it lived. And maybe, if we aren’t careful, it’ll come back to remind us that we are ridiculous.”
She seemed to accept that. Then she leaned close and whispered, “Do you have any more of the dish soap?”
“Always,” I told her. “It’s in the emergency kit.”
We watched the water do its ancient, unshowy business. Dragonflies stitched the humid air. Somewhere upriver, a boat motor coughed to life and thought better of it. Aunt Birdie shouted at someone to put on sunscreen, and Pastor Jim (who had relaxed into the calling of manning the souvenir stand) played with the cash drawer as if it were a hymn he used to know.
I thought about all the small, tired things I had labeled as dead carcasses: the draft in my desk, the friendship I’d let get dusty, the plant in my kitchen that had taken up with the gnats. I made a list in my head. I put “try” next to each one like a dare.
It felt dangerous in the way hope always does, like stepping onto a slick of soap and trusting that your ridiculous feet will find your ridiculous path.
Someone yelled behind us—Len, reporting that a tour boat was ready. A heron, that long-necked sermon, lifted itself off a stump with the unhurried gravity of a judge rising.
“Time to work,” I told the girl.
“Time to find it,” she corrected.
I stood, brushed powdered sugar from my shorts (everything here has powdered sugar on it now; it’s part of the ecosystem), and went to the ticket table.
The first couple in line wanted to know if they’d get refunds if they didn’t see the Aaarrggghhh!. I told them no, but they might see themselves at a better angle.
They looked confused and then charmed, which is the preferred trajectory.
By evening, we’d ferried four boatloads of people along the canal. The sky turned the color of a bruised peach, a Southern spectacular that made everyone involuntarily forgive six things and call their mother.
On the last pass, just as we were about to turn back, a long, gray shape rolled under the surface. You could have missed it if you blinked. None of us did.
We didn’t cheer. We learned. We watched like respectful neighbors peeking through a fence, not wanting to startle a deer, or a possibility.
I put my hand on the water, just a second, just enough to feel the current taking whatever it could and returning what it wanted.
“Still out there,” I whispered, for the girl, for myself, for anyone with ears.
When we docked, I shut down the motor and let the boat bump the wood. People disembarked in that quiet you get after church, whether you got saved or just enjoyed the air-conditioning.
Aunt Birdie handed out lemonade (the non-engine flavor) in plastic cups. Pastor Jim tried to sell a tea towel that said DISH SOAP & SECOND CHANCES in embroidery. Mayor Tandy attempted to take credit for gravity and was gently shushed by a committee of grandmothers.
It’s not a bad town to live in, all told. It’s got bugs big enough to vote and summers that feel like someone left the sky in the dryer too long. It’s also got us, fools and heroes, sometimes in the same hat. It’s got a canal where a creature reminded us we could change the sign without changing our story. It’s got a plaque with too many letters in a yell.You can come read it, if you like. The words won’t be perfect. They never are. They’ll be good enough to point to the water, which is all a sign ever needs to do.
THE DEAD CARCASS OF THE AAARRGGGHHH!
And if you lean close (watch your shoes), you might hear a soft slide under the surface, and you’ll know: sometimes the only difference between dead and resting is somebody finally bothered to make a slippery path home.
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